A lush costume period piece drama that's much too
long and tedious and lacking in dramatics. Most
critics have referred to it as a misguided effort,
though those associated with Cahiers du Cinéma
fully embraced it. "Esther Kahn" was featured at the
1999 Cannes Film Festival, but refused a showing at
the New York Film Festival. It's a strange film, one
that was hard for me to warm up to. Its clumsily told
story is the obstacle, as a narrator (Ramin Gray) is
lazily used to tell its story instead of relying on
dramatics. Yet, it never quite sinks like the usual
from 'rags to riches' Hollywood showbiz bios.

"Esther Kahn" is about an unremarkable, shy, poor
immigrant Jewish girl emerging from a working-class
family of sweatshop tailors in London's East End
towards the close of the 19th century, who through
bold determination transforms herself into a leading
actress. Esther Kahn is played by Summer Phoenix who
gives a decent but hardly a convincing performance, as
she's able to glide into her role and pull out her
character's complicated emotional elements such as her
mixture of fragility and steeliness.

French director Arnaud Desplechin ("My Sex Life
. . . or How I Got Into an Argument"/"La
Sentinelle") adapts a short story by British poet
Arthur Symons, and stumbles his way through this
ambitious project despite his inability to master the
English language. And, despite the film's many
failings, it still is somewhat interesting as it
attempts to get at the mystery and essence of acting.

Esther was born with a different disposition than
her large and noisy family. She never could be
interested in their concerns for socialist
causes or Zionism or working in a sweatshop, and made
no attempt to pretend to fit into her family's
reality. The narrator fills us in throughout about
what Esther feels inside. The narrator tells of how
she was raised in the dark streets near the docks,
where few people could be seen outside and where the
residents all kept their blinds shut. This left her
feeling depressed and looking for a way out of the
ghetto. Her beset mother Rivka (Frances Barber) in a
good-natured way remarks that her Esther (played as a
young girl by Philadelphia Deda) is "not a human child
at all but a monkey, as if that will explain why she's
the odd one in the family."

The self-absorbed Esther is suddenly filled with
ecstasy when she attends a middle-brow ribald Yiddish
play with her family and finds that she doesn't care
if she liked the play or not, because she has found
out for certain that she must be an actress. Esther
boldly auditions for a British theatrical company and
gets a minor role as a maid. Her mother is happily
surprised that she was hired, because it's hard to
think of her sullen and withdrawn and poorly educated
daughter as an actress. Also making the hiring
improbable is that her diction suffers from a strong
Cockney accent, and she refuses to change her Jewish
name as most Jewish actors did during the Victorian
era.

At a play audition, Esther meets an aging
second-rate Jewish actor, Nathan (Ian Holm), who takes
her under his wings. He gives her dubious advice but
it sounds good coming from him because he's so
articulate. He tells her to change and become more
worldly, that she's "as cold and hard as stone." When
he confirms that she's a virgin, he says she's
emotionally dead and urges her to get laid...get a
boyfriend.

Esther sets her mind on snapping up an experienced
lover who could be useful to her and selects a
womanizing playwright and drama critic, Philip (the
director's brother, Fabrice Desplechin). Their affair
blossoms along with her career, as he becomes her
second mentor. In another calculated career-move,
Esther gives Philip a Norwegian copy of Ibsen's latest
drama, Hedda Gabler, and asks him to translate it. As
a result of his translation, Esther is cast in the
lead for its London production.

The focal point of "Esther Kahn" is an exploration
of what makes an actress, and this aim is supposedly
reached by the film's climax. Esther is playing the
lead role of Hedda Gabler at the theater opening and
becomes taken with a severe case of stage fright. Her
repressed actions are set off when she discovers
Philip, who just dumped her for another actress, has
brought that actress to the show. After a few overly
melodramatic bouts trying to injure herself, Esther
goes on to perform. Since we don't see her act except
through slow-mo scenes, we must take the narrator's
word how in that performance "the actress was made."
We are left with the impression that for Esther, being
an actress is everything and the men in her life can
be viewed as stepping stones to that end.

I'm not sure if the understated film really ever got
around its conventional plot devices to demonstrate
what is the magic in acting. The point it tries to
make is that this ordinary woman comes alive only in
the theater. But seeing is believing, and I didn't see
how Esther acts on the stage. I liked Arnaud
Desplechin's previous films and I guess I was let down
because I expected more than what this film was able
to muster. The beauty is in the amazing atmospheric
photography of Victorian London by Eric Gautier and in
the expressive musical score composed by Howard Shore.